December 08, 2006

A bright future for Fireworks

Nearly a year ago I posted a blog entry called "Photoshop + Fireworks: Where to from here?" Customer response was immediate and overwhelming, making it my most commented-upon entry (thanks for all that feedback, by the way). At the time people were a little freaked out that Adobe would bury Fireworks, but I’m pleased to say that just the opposite has happened.

The app is finding new life as a great environment for rapid prototyping & quick interface development. At MAX in October the team demonstrated Fireworks creating an MXML layout for use in Flex, and now the Adobe Edge news letter has posted "A sparkling future for Fireworks." I’ll let you check out the article for complete details, but based on the comments made here, I think folks will really dig the enhanced Photoshop and Illustrator integration, among many other things. [Via]

Adobe Color Management Module b2 now on Labs

Adobe has released a second beta version of the Adobe Color Management module, now available as a free download from Adobe Labs. (For background on the CMM project, check out this intro post.) Customer response has been extremely positive so far, and I’m pleased to report that because of this feedback, we’ve added support for device link profiles. (Hey, maybe there’s a future to this whole Labs/openness thing… ;-)) As always, if this technology is useful to you, we look forward to hearing your thoughts about it.

New digital photography guides from Adobe

Adobe has commissioned a number of digital photography guides from industry heavy hitters, covering everything from metadata to color management, digital workflow to black & white conversion. The complete list with links is in this post’s extended entry, so check ’em out when you have a sec.

Tethered shooting in Lightroom; ACR versioning

At photography shows I’m frequently asked by pro photographers for support of tethered shooting in Lightroom–that is, the ability to have a high-end camera tethered to one’s workstation, and to have the images flow in as they’re shot. The good news is that what’s requested is largely possible already. London-based fashion photographer/author Martin Evening has posted a great intro to shooting tethered in Lightroom. [See also Martin’s overviews of the Lightroom Library and Develop modules.]

Photographer and author Ben Long has posted a Windows
version of his Adobe Camera Raw Version Control package. By duplicating and managing XMP settings files, this free set of
applications makes it simple to create and manage multiple versions
of the same raw document. This means you can
easily create multiple XMP files for the same image, and easily
switch from one to the other. Also check out the free (though donation-supported) Mac version.